A tree to be desired to make one wise
by MThisbe
Summary: DH & Epilogue compliant, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, OCs.  Neville is working on his doctorate in the US; he finds himself in the midst of a mystery.  Rated M because of Neville and the undergraduate ladies; really, who can blame him?
1. Chapter 1: A garden planted eastward

**Disclaimer: Neville does not belong to me. I belong to Neville.**

* * *

There was a warm breeze lifting the leaves of tomato plants and cooling the back of his neck. There was a warm sun beating down, browning his arms and making the cotton of his white shirt stick to his back. There was dirt between his toes - he had removed his shoes and socks to wiggle his toes deep down, unable for many years to pass up an opportunity to temporarily join the community of the soil. There were ripening tomatoes hanging pungent on the vine one row over, patiently waiting for a few more days of this kind of sun, there were potatoes sleepily growing beneath the surface behind him, lettuce rushing to bolt before he harvested its leaves, and tucked over there in a discreet portion of his garden, just a few more special and more worrisome plants that he hadn't been able to resist planting. And there was dirt all over his hands, worked deep into the the calluses and around the edges of the nail beds, smudged on his nose and ground into the knees of his trousers. _Jeans_, he thought to himself, in an attempt to feel slightly more American. Neville smiled; this was the only thing he'd ever really wanted out of an afternoon.

A drop of sweat slid off the end of his nose. Sitting back onto his heels to rest, he looked back through the stand of broccoli he'd been weeding, and thought it a job well done. Beyond the tomatoes, the corn grew high under the August sun. He cast an appraising eye over the onions, the squash, the cucumbers, and the beans, and decided they'd all do for another day. He'd checked the needier of his magical plants before getting involved with the food garden; most of the rest actually did better with less attention. So he stood, stretching his lower back and mopping his face with his sleeve. Judging the sun in the sky, he thought it might be middle of the afternoon. He thought about the beans; the purples could do with a quick harvest and probably a repeat of the charm to strengthen the mycorrhizae, and then that chard planted on the other side had been having a hard time with the slugs. Not to mention the raspberries; they'd been looking a little peaked, and he wanted to do a little diagnostic spellcasting. He reached inside his shirt and pulled his wand from the holster that kept it concealed along his back; then sighed and gestured, "_Illuminatio temporum_." A large and ornate clock face materialized a yard or so in front of him. He'd often wished he knew how to make the clock look more modern; maybe a little bit Swedish, or something. But he'd learned the spell from Luna back in the day, and in addition to his general disinclination these days to _work_ at spells not directly pertaining to plants, he wasn't sure the spell could stand up to any tinkering. And it was useful enough, truth be told; a few extra rhinestones and a picture or two of a totally imaginary creature never hurt anyone.

He smiled at the thought of his best friend, and looked at the clock. It was true, it took a little effort to read it through all the ornamentation, but after a few moments, he decided it was 5:30. Later than he'd thought, but still plenty of time to get cleaned up and changed and get into town to meet that girl for dinner.

He picked up his boots and socks and headed back into his little old farmhouse, banging the screen door on the way in. Doing his best to brush the dirt from the soles of his feet, he looked down at his trousers considered the amount of dirt attached to them. The windows were all open, but nobody was around; his house stood alone in the middle of five acres. So he stripped off his dirty trousers and sweat-soaked shirt, and leaving them in a filthy pile by the door strode utterly naked through his own house to the bathroom.

Luxuriating in the shower, he made sure to scrub the dirt off his feet and clean the sweat out of his hair. He thought about his dinner date and that girl's short dark hair, perky little breasts and the way she wore jeans so tight he didn't understand how she could walk, and so low it was like they weren't trousers at all. _Such_ an improvement on the robes girls wore back home... When the obvious problem ensued, he considered trying to use manly self-restraint. In the end, it was either that he had none to speak of, or (he preferred to think) that he decided the evening would go better if he took care of things ahead of time.

Half dressed in tight slacks, poking through his shirts trying to decide which was most likely to get him laid by a sorority girl that night, he decided simultaneously not to call Regina to confirm their date and to wear the blue shirt with the military-style epaulets. _Who could resist that? _he thought to himself, dancing a little two-step while he tucked it in. _Sorority girls are the best thing about Muggles!_

* * *

Neville opened one eye to a room filled with light. Birds sang, white curtains moved lazily in front of the open window, and adorable, gentle snores issued from the mouth of the girl next to him.

He stretched slowly, careful not to disturb her. The hair that had been so carefully arranged last night was spread over a pillow with the same kind of surprising abandon she had showed in bed. Her clothes (and his!) were spread all around his bedroom. Remembering, he changed his mind about trying not to disturb her, and instead touched one hand to the gentle curve of her shoulder, caressing.

Her eyes flickered open. He watched them carefully: confusion first, followed by pleasant remembrance understanding, then worry. "Neville! Um... do you know time it is? I should probably get going, I have a class at noon." She made a disorganized kind of motion, indicating an intention of getting out of bed.

He slid his hand from her shoulder to the back of her waist. "Good morning." He smiled suggestively and moved it lower yet. "Are you sure you have to go now? It's early yet." A lock of brown hair fell in front of his eyes. "I could make you breakfast and give you a ride back to school afterwards."

"I guess I could stay a little longer, then." Her hesitancy melted away and she moved forward to kiss him, nipples pressed against his chest.

* * *

Some time later, Neville kicked the the sheet away and rolled out of bed. Regina stayed where she was, lying spent against the pillows. "You're going to make me breakfast, right? I'll just stay here and wait."

"Absolutely. I'll just be a bit, and I'll bring it in on a tray. You like eggs and toast?" She nodded while he pulled on a pair of sweatpants, trying not to show his relief. The downside of bringing girls back to his place was that he had to keep them out of the kitchen at any cost. He did have running water, because friends and such who came over (not to mention the occasional girl when he was lucky) would need to use the bathroom. But the house didn't exactly have the gas hooked up. Or the electric. He hadn't seen the point, honestly; still wasn't comfortable with using them, and the fuss and hassle of paying the bills every month wasn't worth it when he was perfectly competent - sometimes even downright skilled - at all the housekeeping spells his Gran had made him learn all those years ago.

So all things considered, it was simpler when he brought home a girl who was a bit of a spoiled princess and didn't really want to talk to him. He'd lay any odds that she was texting her friends about her conquest from his bed right now, and his actual company trying to make awkward conversation would only be an impediment to her enjoyment of the morning. Which left him free to get on with breakfast.

He retrieved his wand from its spot by the door and got eggs scrambling, bread toasting, and coffee brewing. A stack of mail sat on the edge of the smooth-scrubbed old kitchen table where he'd left it yesterday afternoon; all junk, no doubt. He glanced out of habit at the windowbox outside the open kitchen window. It was empty, which might have seemed odd (shouldn't there be soil? flowers? herbs? something, anyways) to anyone thinking about it, but nobody ever did. He couldn't really remember the last time he'd had an owl post, but he supposed they'd remember to leave it in the box the next time came. Just so long as they didn't make a delivery to him in his office; endless awkwardness, with no Ministry to help with the necessary Obliviation.

Idle leafing-through of the pile of junk mail found him a gardening catalog with pretty pictures to look at while breakfast cooked, but with little enough intellectual content that his sleepy, post-coital brain wasn't taxed. He arranged the breakfast things on a tray, leaned out the back door to pick a handful of flowers from the bed next to the house, and stuck them in a little vase. It was the little touches that really defined chivalry, his Gran had always said; and even if he never saw Regina again, which seemed entirely possible, he wouldn't want her to think she wasn't worth a little romance.

When he carried the tray into the bedroom, he found she'd put her clothes back on and was sitting in bed poking at her phone. She looked up and smiled; the phone was quickly tucked away in a belated display of manners. "Oooo, breakfast in bed with _flowers_!" she cooed. "I don't think a boy has _ever_ brought me breakfast in bed before." Dark lashes batted, and an endearing display of cleavage was presented, almost certainly on purpose, as she leaned forward to snag a cup of coffee. "You British boys really _are_ raised right."

The inevitable stab of sadness was almost immediately quelled by long habit, and he smiled back. _I wonder what Gran would say about that. _ "Have some toast, won't you?"

Muffled electronic pop music emanated from his jacket pocket. Neville could tell from the ringtone he'd assigned that it was his lab phone calling, and wondered what on earth would impel Jackson to call him at just past ten on a Friday morning, when Neville was never on campus and rarely available by phone. "I'm sorry, I really have to take this call."

He ignored the ensuing _pro forma_ pout and retrieved the phone from its pocket berth. "Jackson, what's going on?"

There was a massive and audible sigh of relief on the other end of the line. "Oh thank god you answered! You've got to come in, Neville. There's a little bit of a situation here."

Neville looked over at the bed; Regina's pout had disappeared and she was making rapid inroads on the the pile of cheesy eggs. "What kind of a situation is that? I'm a little busy this morning."

"Well..." A throat was cleared, hesitantly. "Your seed seems to be missing."


	2. Chapter 2: Whose seed is in itself

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of a pretty girl chewing toast and slurping coffee.

"Which seed would that be, Jackson?" Neville's voice was forcibly slow and even, verging on dangerous.

"_You_ know." Neville could imagine the nervous shifting from foot to foot that must go with that particular tone of voice, and the uncomfortable twiddling of a pen found on the desk. "I really don't think we should talk about this on the phone. Are you coming in today?"

"It seems like I'll have to, doesn't it? I'll see you in a bit." He poked the button of the phone with unnecessary force, shoved it back into its pocket, and looked at Regina - who had managed to consume most of the toast and eggs meant for two portions in the short time he'd been on the phone.

"What's going on?" Her mouth was a little bit full, and there were toast crumbs on her left cheek.

He traded his sweatpants for a pair of clean slacks from a hanger in the closet and pulled on an undershirt, mental wheels spinning free as the gears shifted with no little resistance from _naked girl in bed_ to _irreplaceable and illegal seed gone missing_. "I'm going to have to go in to campus earlier than I thought, I'm sorry. There's a little emergency in my lab. Where do you need to be dropped off?"

Regina blinked and scratched her knee. "Um...north campus?"

A button-down shirt found its way on over the undershirt as she swung her legs out of bed. She meandered her way into the bathroom, and Neville took the opportunity to strap on his wand in its holster underneath his as-yet-untucked shirt. He hadn't worn it out to dinner last night to save awkwardness if he was lucky enough to bring her home, and wouldn't ordinarily make a point of wearing it to school. But with _that seed_ missing, he wasn't sure exactly what was going on; and it would be unfortunate to be caught out.

When she finally emerged from the bathroom, damp and smelling of mysterious and oddly unappealing chemicals (but looking Put Together in the way American university students seemed to find necessary) he was drinking coffee on his creakily antique couch in the living room, fully dressed with his shoes all laced up, reading a printout of an intimidatingly obscure journal article.

"Ready to go?" he said brightly, rising from the couch as she picked up her purse from the spot by the bedroom door where she had placed, or at least tossed, it the night before.

She dropped her hips each in turn as she crossed the room. "Well, if we _have_ to go now..." The morning's earlier pout resurfaced as she placed her hand perilously close to his wand holster. He ignored both the pout and the invitation to return to bed for the rest of the morning; sadly, he had far more important concerns than taking off an admittedly attractive undergraduate's clothes _again_.

"I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid we do. There's a matter at the lab that requires my attention." He deftly deflected her arm by sliding his own down her waist and buttock, ending with a little squeeze and a firm kiss of those pouting lips.

He guided her out the door, closing it and turning the warded lock behind him. It wasn't so much that there was anything to be afraid of in upstate New York, so far as he knew. He hadn't even met any other wizards or witches around, and the Americans didn't seem to have a Ministry - or maybe they would call it a Bureau, or a Department? - that kept track of magic. Then again, he'd been discreet. He warded his house more out of old wartime habits than for any other reason, and because you never could tell. But other than the wards and the magic he had to use for some of his more special plants, he really didn't do much spellcasting these days. It had never been his strong suit anyways.

Although there was the car; he smiled to himself, glad again that hybrid vehicles had become so popular. He hadn't had to worry about charming the vehicle to make noises and emit smoke, and people didn't wonder when he never seemed to have to stop for gas. Then again it _had_ started out as a hybrid, before he'd monkeyed with it to make run on a charm. Arthur would be proud to know that all those hours on Neville's holidays from Cambridge spent having "man time" and working on illicit vehicles had paid off so well.

He opened the passenger door for Regina and closed it behind her as she made a show of tucking her skirt appropriately around her smooth thighs. Not that there was much to tuck. He turned the key, put the car into gear, and headed out the driveway and down Ellis Hollow Road.

He wondered if he should try to make conversation, since the silence might be a little awkward. An inquiry into which class she had at noon yielded an answer that he had a hard time believing could possibly be true; surely even an American university wouldn't give academic credit for a course with a title that ludicrous. Since it wouldn't be within shouting distance of polite to say so, he let the conversation lapse, and after firming up his intention not to see her again if he could help it, his thoughts returned to the seed.

The seed, _Lodoicea maldivica_, purchased from a conspiratorially cheerful young man on a lonely beach on an island in the Seychelles archipelago. The seed, kept carefully at a controlled temperature and humidity in a charmed cabinet in his closet through the breakup and his final undergraduate year, husbanded on an absurdly anachronistic sea voyage because it was too big for carry-on and he wouldn't trust it in checked baggage. The seed, crux of his proposed doctoral research; the seed, which as recently as just yesterday had been safely in a locked cabinet to which he alone had the key, and which was warded magically better than his own house.

Through summer-deserted campus, over the bridge, right and right again the little car turned under minimal direction from the passenger seat, coming to a controlled halt in front of the Kappa Delta house. Neville turned the key and got out to open Regina's door for her, handing her out of the car in the manner (he thought) of an eighteenth-century swain delivering his sweetheart to a ball. It wasn't clear that she felt it the same way as she stumbled in her fluster. He kissed her politely on the cheek and closed the door.

"Thank you for a lovely evening. I hope your class is... illuminating."

She dimpled prettily. "Oh, thank _you_. See you later!"

"One could only hope to be so lucky." He tried to keep the any hint of irony out of his voice, and thought based on her reaction that he had probably succeeded. She turned and walked up the drive, and as he drove away he tried with considerably less success to squelch his rising panic.

_Whatever could have happened to it?_


	3. Chapter 3: In seed time learn

A beep as an electronic lock opened, and then a door slammed at the end of a long hall. Sturdy, unhurried footsteps echoed on old linoleum, then slapped up a single flight of concrete stairs. Another door opened and slammed shut, this time accompanied by a gentle movement of air through the room, and the footsteps came steadily across the lab. The footsteps stopped. A throat was cleared.

Through all of this, through all of this, shaggy brown head resting on hands, elbows propped on an untidy wooden desk, Jackson did not move.

When waiting failed to have an effect, Neville moved into interrogation. "All right, Jackson, let's have it. What on earth is going on? How could my seed _possibly _ have gone missing without triggering the security system?" The lab was equipped with a reasonably modern system, mostly due to some abortive research Dr. Glenheimer had started a few years ago with plants from which could be distilled a controlled substance. The system was neither updated nor maintained, but the graduate students in the lab made a point of keeping the door locked and turning the security system on. True, the two of them might not exactly know what would _happen_ if the alarm were tripped, but they had talked about it and they were pretty sure it would at least make a loud noise so someone would know.

No loud noise was evident.

Teresa Jackson slowly lifted her head, leaned back, and spun her chair to face Neville. She didn't look like she had had a great morning. She looked stressed out. _Good_, thought a tiny and immediately-squelched voice in the back of Neville's mind. _If the rest of my weekend is going to be ruined, I might as well have company_.

"I don't know, Nev." She shook her head slowly. "When were you last here? I came in this morning about seven to check on my seedlings -"

He cut her off. "You didn't call until after TEN! What the _hell_, Jackson!"

"Oh, honestly. My seedlings are right there!" She gestured irritably across the lab to a few trays of cheerful-looking cotyledons. "I didn't go into the other room until nine-thirty to wash some things up, and I only _happened_ to look at your humidor in there and noticed that it _happened_ to be empty! It's not like there was a break-in and the place is trashed, for God's sake! You're lucky I noticed at all. When would you have seen it - Monday, when you were done charming the pants off of a few bimbos?"

"Tuesday, more like."

Jackson snorted derisively and leaned further back into her chair. "I wonder when they're going to start seeing through you."

Neville snorted back. "They _already_ see through me. That's the point. They like it, I like it - nobody's pulling one over on anyone. And we're all a little bit happier. You ought to try it sometime - you might like it."

"In your dreams, limey." Neville flushed, a little. He hadn't actually meant that she should try it _with him_ - she scared him, truth be told. But he didn't want to hurt her feelings, so he put on a small leer, winked ludicrously, and she laughed.

The he remembered why he had evicted the willing and entirely unfrightening girl from his bed and driven into campus on a Saturday morning, and the leer fell off his face while the smile fell off Jackson's. "Well, I'd better take a look."

Her voice followed him as he crossed into the next room. "Not that there's much to see..."

She was right, there wasn't. The lab was in perfect order - cabinets closed, some glassware drying on the rack where she'd left it. And over in the corner farthest from the windows, humming quietly to itself in a song that could have been mistaken for the merely electrical, his humidor. Still plugged in, still functioning; padlock still on the door, and the red light from his own computerized security lock blinking at the frequency that meant "armed and ready". An LED display on the front corner read out 11:51 27° 0.45 READY.

He touched his hand to his wand through his shirt, muttering "_Probo fiducia_", barely audible. A uniform golden light flared briefly around and through the cabinet and slowly faded - his wards were still intact.

And yet.

Clearly visible through the shatterproof glass front of the cabinet was exactly nothing. The lock unbroken, the wards unbreached - but the seed simply _gone._

He had thought - assumed as a matter of course - that if his seed were actually missing, it was as a part of a larger break-in at the lab. True, he'd been hard put to imagine any sensible theives choosing the Glenheimer Lab as a target for theft, but maybe there were more valuable things than he knew about in here somewhere. Or maybe there was a past employee with a grudge. Maybe an undergraduate having a psychotic break. Or maybe, he'd thought, Jackson was just messing with him, or just plain wrong. He'd half expected to see the thing still sitting inside its cabinet, and at least a quarter more expected it to be hidden under a bench. Never in his most pessimistically-whirling thoughts had he considered that without breaching lab security, without _opening the cabinet_, his seed and only his seed would have been stolen.

He sank down onto a stool and stared blankly at the wall above the cabinet. _The wards aren't even broken - I won't be able to use their traces to track the seed - I can't believe this is happening - what will I do for my research if I can't find it - what if it gets into the Wrong Hands - the door is still locked, I can see it - I'll never be able to find another one of these - I can't even report it missing, it's illegal..._

Neville's thoughts spun, and slowly settled on an interesting deduction.

_There is another wizard on this campus_.

Jackson's footsteps came up behind him while he pondered this.

"I didn't call anyone but you." She sounded a little nervous, and a little solicitous. It made sense; her own research was fine, but she had delivered some extremely bad news to someone she had to spend an awful lot of time around. "I didn't even call Glen, I thought you might want to; I thought about calling the police, but then I remembered in time that it wasn't really supposed to be here anyways...what do you want to do next, Nev?" She trailed off.

Nevilled didn't answer for a little while, because he was still thinking.

_There is another wizard on campus, and he has stolen the only seed of its kind from me, and I don't know why._

He stood up and turned to look at Teresa. "Thank you for remembering not to call the police. If they found it and the wrong people heard about it, it would probably be destroyed rather than returned to me." He sighed. "I'm going to have to find it myself. But we're also going to have to tell Glen. Would you mind calling him and telling him about what happened this morning? I'll just sit in here and try to think about what to do next."

It was a weak excuse to get her out of the room, and she did look at him strangely - and even more strangely when he moved to close the door between the two rooms. But he couldn't bother thinking of a better excuse, and he didn't want to wait for what he was about to do next. He clicked the lock over, reached up under his shirt, and pulled out his wand. Gesturing carefully and speaking a few words, he set in motion a little spell to reveal any recent traces of magic in the room. And while he did, his thoughts continued to spin, and they settled at last on a final addition to his deductions.

_There is another wizard on campus, and he has stolen the only seed of its kind from me, and he must mean to do wrong with it, and I must stop him._


End file.
